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Va. GOP: Bid to End Car-Tax Break Would Be Dead On Arrival

Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell reiterated his opposition Tuesday to new taxes as a means to offset a state revenue shortfall estimated at roughly $3 billion.

“I said very clearly during the campaign and since then that I’m not going to raise taxes; and repealing significant tax reductions, like the car-tax cuts, I would view as a tax increase,” he said.

A recent article in The Virginian-Pilot revealed that outgoing Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and his team have examined the annual $950 million state subsidy to localities for car-tax relief as one possible pot of revenue that could be used to fill in budget holes.

While it is unclear whether some form of car-tax repeal will be in the spending plan Kaine presents Dec. 18, the idea has already received a chilly reception from Republicans.

“I don’t see it going anywhere, and that’s why I think it’s counterproductive to put it in the budget,” Del. Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, said in a panel discussion Tuesday at The Associated Press Day at the Capitol event.

McDonnell said he has made his feelings about the budget known to Kaine and hopes the governor “doesn’t put me in a position where we’ve got to do some significant additional things” to cut spending.

Whatever situation he inherits, McDonnell said he will move forward with the agenda he articulated on the campaign trail regardless of the inhospitable economic climate.

His priorities include reopening shuttered rest stops within his first 90 days in office and using revenue from the sale of state liquor stores to fund road needs.

Other topics discussed in the one-hour session with reporters and editors included:

n Media coverage of McDonnell’s 1989 master’s thesis advocating a socially conservative agenda in government.

“I thought there were many that covered it accurately and briefly and gave it the coverage it deserved,” McDonnell said slowly, carefully choosing each word as he responded. “And there were others that covered it probably incessantly and to some degrees inaccurately.”

n His still-developing plans to sell state liquor stores to pay for road needs. McDonnell has said privatizing liquor stores could generate $500 million for transportation needs in Virginia, a claim Democrats reject as fantasy.

“The fact that it’s been proposed and failed before doesn’t mean anything to me,” McDonnell said. “It’s never been proposed with the leadership of a governor.”

n Finding a private developer to help the state expand U.S. 460 as a toll road between Suffolk and Petersburg, where the governor-elect envisions a junction with Interstate 85.

n The lack of a significant role during the campaign for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a popular but polarizing figure.

“Once we got into the home stretch of the campaign, we pretty much had kind of an idea of what we needed and had people that were willing to come and help us – primarily some of the current Republican governors. Haley Barbour and Tim Pawlenty and some others, Bobby Jindal… It wasn’t anything about Sarah Palin other than a lot of people already willing to help us,” he said.